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Department of History  

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Roberta Senechal de la Roche
31A Newcomb Hall
463-8456 (office) 804-295-7153 (home)
Office hours: T & Th 9-10, 12-1, W 12-4, or by appointment
email:  senechalr@wlu.edu

Course Description

This course is a general survey of the social, economic, and political changes that transformed an agrarian, localized, colonial society into a developing and urbanizing industrial nation.  Lectures will provide a broad chronological overview of major events, issues, and trends.  Topics examined will include: the nature of colonial society, cultural and political conflict, the emergence of a revolutionary and national consciousness, slavery, antebellum reform, the escalation of sectional conflict leading to the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

Course Requirements

During the term, there will be two in-class examinations (each worth 25 percent of the final grade) and one final examination (30 percent of the grade).  In addition, there will be five brief, short-answer quizzes on assigned chapters in the course textbook, America: A Narrative History (for a total of 20 percent of the final grade).  The dates for textbook quizzes will be announced in class a week or so before they are given.

Required Readings (available at the University Bookstore)

George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, America: A Narrative History, Volume 1, 5th 
edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999)

Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma (New York: Longman Addison, 1999)

Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves and the Making of 
the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: Hill & Wang, 1976)

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (New York: Penguin 
Books, 1982)

James C. Curtis, Andrew Jackson and the Search for Vindication (New York: Addison 
Wesley Longman, 1976)

Stephen B. Oates, Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths (New York: Harper &  Row, 1984)
 

Schedule

September 12-14 America: A Narrative History, Chapters 1-3

September 19-21 America, Chapter 4.  Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma, due for discussion Tuesday, September 19.

September 26-28 America, Chapters 5 and 6

October 3-5  Woody Holton,  Forced Founders, due for discussion Thursday, October 5.

October 10  America, Chapters 7 and 8
 

*** EXAMINATION ONE -- TUESDAY, OCTOBER 10 ***
 

October 17-19  America, Chapters 9-11

October 24-26  America, Chapters 12 and 13.  James C. Curtis, Andrew Jackson and the Search for Vindication, due for discussion Thursday, October 26.

October 31- November 2  America, Chapters 14 and 15

November 7-9  America, Chapter 16.  Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, due for discussion Thursday, November 11. 

November 14-16 America, Chapter 17.
 

*** EXAMINATION TWO -- TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14 ***
 

November 28-30  America, Chapter 18.

December 5-7  Stephen B. Oates, Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths, due for discussion Thursday, December 7.
 

FINAL EXAMS BEGIN SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9